Heroic spirit to be highlighted at Wuhan sub-venue of 2025 Spring Festival Gala: director

The heroic spirit will be highlighted as one of the major elements at the Wuhan sub-venue of 2025 Spring Festival Gala with focus on everyday heroes from all walks of life to honor the ordinary people who have contributed to the city's development.

As one of the four sub-venues for the 2025 Spring Festival Gala, Wuhan, the capital of central China's Hubei Province, will hold the theme "A Heroic City Shines Bright Today."

The main stage of the Wuhan sub-venue will be set at the foot of the Yellow Crane Tower, the city's iconic landmark, where energetic and rhythmic performance like drum beating will be presented.

The 2025 Spring Festival Gala, which will be broadcast live at the night of Jan 28, the eve of the Chinese Lunar New Year, has four sub-venues respectively set in the Chongqing Municipality, Wuhan, Lhasa of the Xizang Autonomous Region, and Wuxi of Jiangsu Province.

At a gala rehearsal held on Thursday, Zhang Min, director of the Wuhan Sub-venue, said the Yellow Crane Tower will be highlighted as a symbol of the heroic spirit of Wuhan.

"You can see that we shoot a set of special clips in the Yellow Crane Tower. It seems like we intend to present the tower simply as an ancient Chinese building. But actually, it represents the heroic spirit. Wuhan is a heroic city and in particular its people are heroes," said Zhang.

Models selected from residents of Wuhan who are from various professions are invited to participate in the gala and their presence will be a vivid demonstration of the city's heroic spirit.

The gala, also known as "Chunwan" in Chinese, has been regarded as a major cultural symbol for the traditional Lunar New Year celebrations in China and has been broadcast live annually since 1983.

Heroic spirit to be highlighted at Wuhan sub-venue of 2025 Spring Festival Gala: director

The death toll from a landfill collapse in the central Philippine city of Cebu has risen to eight by Monday morning as search and rescue operations continued for another 28 missing people.

The landfill collapse occurred on Thursday as dozens of sanitation workers were working at the site. The disaster has already caused injuries of 18 people.

Family members of the missing people said the rescue progress is slow, and the hope for the survival of their loved ones is fading.

"For me, maybe I’ve accepted the worst result already because the garbage is poisonous and yesterday, it was raining very hard the whole day. Maybe they’ve been poisoned. For us, alive or dead, I hope we can get their bodies out of the garbage rubble," said Maria Kareen Rubin, a family member of a victim.

Families have set up camps on high ground near the landfill, awaiting news of their relatives. Some people at the site said cries for help could still be heard hours after the landfill collapsed, but these voices gradually faded away.

Bienvenido Ranido, who lost his wife in the disaster, said he can't believe all that happened.

"After they gave my wife oxygen, my kids and I were expecting that she would be saved that night because she was still alive. But the night came and till the next morning, they didn't manage to save her," he said.

Death toll in central Philippine landfill collapse rises to eight